A natural disaster is what they are. Fingernails chipped and uneven. Cuticles with a life of their own. Mud lodged into knuckles and palms so caked with grime no palmist could make sense out their story.
What’s a girl who likes to play in the dirt in the good old summertime to do? I try to wear gloves when gardening, especially when tending to roses, but find that for weeds, watering and deadheading I need my bare hands in the soil.
When I held out my handful of bills to pay for a few groceries at the store, I was aghast at how ragged and worn out my hands looked. With no time for a manicure, I took matters into my own hands, and carved some time out of my evening, emery board and nail buffer at the ready.
I filed and buffed, applied hand cream and nail strengthener. I shook the bottle of nail polish I selected from a few choices in the cabinet. Out came the applicator oozing with a color neutral enough to say summer, dark enough to cover my dirty sins. One finger, the two. One hand then the other. As my nails dried, I felt a tad optimistic about how I handled my fistfuls of angst. I secured the bottle’s cap and then noticed that I had just painted my nails in Sally Hansen #250, with the unexpected name of Mudslide!
Penny, I’m sitting here having a good chuckle. I have the same dilemma with my gardening hands, for I always end up peeling off the gloves so I can do weeding or tease out the roots of seedlings. Gloves are so clumsy. But mudslide!! what a name. You thought were escaping the earth into a bit of glamour and look what happened. The cosmetic creative namers of things got there before you.
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Juliet, “tease out the roots” is a fitting way to describe handling seedlings, I use the word “tickle”. We know what to do with those roots, don’t we? Just not with gloves on.
A bit of glamour just isn’t the hand i was dealt. 🙂 I had a bit of a chuckle when I realized the name and I’m glad you did as well.
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Oh, I love it … thanks for the very early morning chuckle … you are even more of a night owl than I … :))
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Glad to oblige, Teresa. I was just tucking in when you were awakening, I think. It was just one of those times where I was finishing up several projects and thought, oh well, might as well do my blog, too.
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The title of your post this morning is both clever and fitting, Penny. I must tell you, however, that when I saw it, my first and immediate thought was, “Oh, dear God, please not another.”
I don’t believe you are aware of my bit of connection to the Oso WA event this past March. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_Oso_mudslide: “Excluding landslides caused by volcanic eruptions, earthquakes or dam collapses, the Oso slide is the deadliest single landslide event in United States history.”
This slide commenced, at most, only 3 to 3.5 miles down the highway from the place I lived and worked for nearly three years. My second son is a graduate of Darrington High School. Although I knew none of the persons who were lost (one of whom has still not been recovered), or any of their immediate families, I do know and care for many who live in and around Darrington. When the immediacy and horror of that life-altering event were no longer “front-page” worthy, most of the country moved on to the next big thing, but the folks in the communities of Oso and Darrington will forever be changed and many will probably never be able to fully “move on.” Hence, “Mudslides” takes on a decidedly different hue for me. I sometimes think, “There, but for the grace of God . . .”
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Oh my goodness, Karen. I did not know you had this connection to the communities effected by that landslide. We watched the news reports on the devastation and tragic loss of lives and homes and life as it was once known there and I could not imagine going through this. How horrifying it must have been for you to be watching the news as it transpired and of course, the title of this post must have brought fear into your heart. I am so sorry for the feelings this must have brought up for you and truly thank you for telling me about how this disaster touched you. “There, but for the grace of God ” is a phrase I have uttered myself. It is good to remember that, Karen. Penny
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I love that color! Lately I have opted for some of the “mod” colors—dark purple and navy blue. I guess we like to live dangerously! LOL
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Aren’t you the fashionable one, Marilyn? I’m more the mauve-y type, but, you inspire me to perhaps live a bit more on the edge of color. 🙂 I do love the color purple.
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Too funny! I can’t do gardening gloves either, they just don’t feel right somehow. I keep my nails very short in the summer but they still don’t look great. But at least any dirt under them is ‘honest’ dirt. 🙂
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Well, then – “honest”dirt it is for us, Cath. Can’t say we didn’t work for it, can we? I’ll confess that the color of mud has already chipped off my nails, as I was out in the wee hours scratching the earth with my bare hands. Oh well.
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That’s so funny! I love the color, though. My nails and hands take quite a beating, too, Penny, and I really try to work with gloves, but they inevitably come off because sometimes I just need to feel the dirt. I get manicures fairly regularly and I usually get a little lecture about how abusive I am. I never bother to have her apply polish. It will be off in a flash, chipped and looking worse than bare nails. I like the “honest dirt” comment and think we should just be proud. It reminds me of the baby shower I gave in my backyard a couple of years ago when everyone commented on how they wished they had gardens to sit in. When it came to a conversation about how much work goes into that…no one was really interested. I don’t remember, but they probably had perfect acrylic nails! I don’t, but I have the garden. Tee-hee!
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Years ago, I tried acrylic nails, only, it was a waste of money as the tips kept getting lost in the dirt and I got the same kind of lecture of “hand abuse”. ha Several days after my mudslide discovery and my efforts are all but a memory, Debra. So much for covering up my sins of the soil! It’s actually a pretty good color, though I was a bit surprised to see it show up as a choice for a bride’s manicure.
What a perfect place for a baby shower your garden would be – and I can understand the amount of work it takes to keep it up, Debra. There is a sense of accomplishment, though, that comes from the toil on our knees that only a gardener really knows – and a very wise poet with dirt on his hands that you introduced me to. 🙂
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Dear Penny, it’s 11:30 A. M. here and your posting just provided me with my first real laugh-out-loud moment of the day! Thank you. How delightful that you glanced down and saw that on your dirt-incised fingernails, you’d applied “Mudslide”! I love it! Peace.
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So pleased that my little discovery gave you a laugh, Dee. You are welcome.
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Oh, what fun! Thanks for the giggle. I like the color and the name. Back in the day when I was always carrying wood to heat the house, I found that my nails and even my fingers were stained walnut color. I have never been one for fancy fingernails, but would rather they look clean. I have the same problem with gloves. I never wear them. I will look for the Mudslide color. Around here a mudslide is what you call a gooey brownie with ice cream on it and then the whole thing is covered with chocolate syrup and nuts.
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You’re welcome. I got it at Walgreens, though it was last year, which will tell you how often I use polish. Isn’t it the funniest of names, especially on my earth stained hands, which brings me to your walnut ones. That kind of stain must have taken until late spring to wash out. When the trees here drop the walnuts, the road is all colored in the stain where cars go over them. We had to wear rubber gloves (here I am back again on the subject of gloves) when we harvested them.
Now, I’m hungry for a mudslide – your way. Sounds incredibly yummy!
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Totally suitable for earth encrusted nails and fingers. I expect your hands won’t stay as beautiful as they are at the moment.
I don’t even bother anymore, just soak them in the bath and hope for the best.
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There was a chink in my nail armor within a day, Friko, and now I’m back to my earth-worn look. I keep a little nail brush by the sink, which is my first line of defense as I come in, and that helps, but, ah, well . . . it is summer and we gardeners are easily identifiable, aren’t we, by the looks of our hands?
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Love it, Penny! 🙂 My hands are a lost cause as I keep my nails so short that nail polish would just look odd on them. In fact I don’t actually have any nail polish since the last bottle turned solid and was thrown away. 🙂
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Ha! I’ve had bottles turn to solid myself, Perpetua. My hands are basically a lost cause as well, and that little self-inflicted manicure quickly became 10 pitted and chipped experiments in, well, in mud. 🙂
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Oh Penny — the joys and sorrows, laughter and tears, of catching up with your wonderful posts. I am commenting on this one and all three above it because of lack of time and slow connections up here in the Northland. This post had me laughing so hard (and empathizing although I don’t have your good excuse of being a master gardener!). The two about the deer (especially when read together) … I can’t express how sorry the second one made me … nature isn’t always kind, I know that, but …oh I’m just so sorry!
And the weather here on the Peninsula is beautiful .. we’ve had rain some mornings, but it isn’t cold at all (unless you fall down with your hands in a glacier…not that I’d know that personally or anything!)
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Time – it is so precious, Perpetua, and here you are, making the most of it. I’m always happy to hear from you, and most definitely here today. Thank you for all your words and compassion.
Wonderful! I’ll be looking forward to hearing about your time in there this year as time permits. Hope you are feeling well.
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